


Stay Alive

by applejwoos (kenmarcadeblues)



Series: Fears of World; Hopes of World; Tears of World [1]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Angst, Exposition, Gen, the luwoo can be platonic if you want i mean whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-25
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-05-13 15:24:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14751437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kenmarcadeblues/pseuds/applejwoos
Summary: It's Reaping Day in District 2. Yukhei is unlucky and the Careers go out of their way to be bigger assholes than usual.





	Stay Alive

**Author's Note:**

> random and rushed but i wrote it for the event/game/thing known as [last idol standing](http://aminoapps.com/p/2vb945) on amino and let's just say there's a time limit and a sense of urgency. i am Stressed

Yukhei hates this. He genuinely hates this, so much that his skin is crawling. But he supposes everybody does, except for Careers and people who have gone apathetic to it all.  
  
Careers. That’s what a group of his friends have proudly called themselves since they were eight years old. The same group was now either laughing out of surprise, hollering in glee, or staring at him with eyes alight in newly kindled envy.  
  
Seconds tick by. Nothing.  
  
Nobody gives in to the urge to volunteer. Maybe there’s been rumors that the arena will be especially brutal this year. Maybe they just want to see what will happen, when nobody volunteers, when one of them is up here against their will; perhaps it’s been too long since that has happened in District 2. Perhaps it’s time to switch things up for the Capitol crazies.

 _Could they have somehow planned this bullshit?_  
  
Yukhei almost wants to laugh. That’s the only thing keeping a grimace of disturbance and fear off his face. The irony of him lumbering up to the stage while all the Career boys are watching from the crowd is the only thing giving him enough strength to harden his expression, as hard as the bricks he breaks and lays day after day.

 

 

Two weeks ago they’d gotten him a bit drunk off their fancy alcohol, these bastard friends of his, and he’d agreed to try to seduce Ahn Yoojung, the victor of the previous games, despite the rumors that she “played for the other team.”  
  
“Doesn’t matter,” Yukhei had insisted. “I’m me.”  
  
Instead of just relaxing and enjoying that dinner party like he should have, he had spent the majority of the evening flirting messily with an older woman who he didn’t have any feelings for whatsoever.  
  
Needless to say, Yukhei failed.  
  
When he woke up the next day, he almost forgot all about the stupid bet, except he was passed out on one of the countless sofas on the first floor of the Lee family's endless house and Jeno burst in with an annoying little singsong of, “Wake up, Sleeping Beauty! It’s almost two and you know how grumpy Anya gets when people show after three.” Anya is the Peacekeeper in charge of the Common Resources and Administration Office, which is where one goes to apply for tesserae.  
  
Tesserae. A year’s worth of grain and oil that he and his mother used to need in the few years between his father never coming back from his business trip to the Capitol and Yukhei developing muscles that allowed him to finally find decent work. Now the steady demand of the workload at the brickyard provided enough for him to never go hungry and, more recently, hire a caretaker for his mother. Her inexplicable transformation into a single mom had done things to her. The woman he’d known at ten years old had died of loneliness.  
  
Tesserae. Another slip of paper into the glass ball, another droplet of water into a ship that could sink at any moment.  
  
He'd pressed his hand to his forehead and groaned. A headache was coming on.

  
  
  
A bet is a bet. Yukhei had shaken on it and couldn’t go back.  
  
And so, when today—Reaping Day—finally rolled around, ‘Yukhei’ was written on one more slip of paper than the nineteen year old would’ve liked.  
  
One more out of thousands is nothing.  
  
Thirteen out of thousands is nothing.  
  
But each slip of paper is never nothing to Yukhei. To most of his friends, it’s not, either.  
It’s a raffle to them. Being chosen as a Tribute would be the grand prize, the ultimate satisfaction, rather than having to volunteer.  
  
Yukhei doesn’t think the same way as them and they know it. That’s exactly why they’d made applying for tesserae a punishment for a bet which was doomed from the start.  
  
_He hates this._  
  
Once he’s beside the escort, Yukhei clasps his calloused hands behind his back and stands up tall. The least he can do is make a good first impression, give the cameras something to work with.  
  
A scream pierces the air and his wandering eyes are yanked towards the source of the noise.  
  
A young, brunet haired man has a face filling up with grief like a plugged bathtub, faucets on full blast. Though his features are bunched up as he cries, Yukhei would know those soft features in any version of reality.  
  
“No!” shrieks Jungwoo. He falls to his knees on the concrete and everyone standing near him backs away out of either decency or surprise. Everyone except a small blond, who’s sticking by Jungwoo and futilely attempting to comfort him despite the tears dripping off his own chin. Yukhei’s brain wants to put a name to his round cheeks but he can’t focus. “No, no, no!”  
  
From a young age, it was clear that Jungwoo was a gentle, simple soul. He never wanted to hurt anyone and the prospect of the Games always scared him. Like other kids from wealthy families, there was only 8 of his name in the glass bowl, once for each year past his twelfth birthday; yet he attends every Reaping Day with a stomach full of bricks, knocking against each other in every movement; and his brain eats broadcasts like irresistible poison. Clips of previous Games come to him at night. It never matters if he’d known the Tributes, if they were even from District 2 or not. He screams for them all, for all the fallen in his dreams until he can’t feel his chest.  
  
Jungwoo isn’t perfect, but he’s the perfect antidote to Jeno and other Careers. With him, Yukhei can speak honestly, even if he has to whisper sometimes, about the Hunger Games and how, in the Capitol, there’s humans but no humanity.

 

  
_Yukhei sighed. “Sometimes I wish you wouldn’t sing like that.” It was getting dark, and Yukhei had walked to the Square with Jungwoo and gotten ice cream. Now the two were sitting on the marble edge of the large fountain, Jungwoo’s smooth voice blending in with the running water._  
  
_“Why?” Jungwoo asked, then turned to Yukhei with eyelashes batting wildly. “Afraid you’ll fall for me?”_  
  
_“Hah, you wish,” Yukhei scoffed while pushing his shoulder. “Nah, it’s just...I dunno. If I became a Tribute, they...they could twist a voice that nice. Use it against me, somehow. ”_  
  
_Jungwoo frowned. “I wish you wouldn’t talk like that.”_

 

  
Yukhei thinks he’s going to throw up.  
  
Jungwoo keeps screaming until Peacekeepers start surrounding him, loudly threatening that he’d better keep quiet now. The escort’s not done. This little overture must go on, for tradition and camera’s sake.  
  
With his best friend’s voice ringing in his ears, Yukhei can’t hear anything else that’s being said, and suddenly, there’s applause and he’s being ushered off the stage.  
  
The female Tribute is next to him as they descend the short stairs and he finally gets a good look at the woman who’d volunteered. She’s stunning, all glossy hair and eyes that burn like a furnace. She has trained years for this opportunity, he can see it in the way she breathes.  
  
_He genuinely hates this._  
  
Once on the ground, the crowd of people part to make way and the gazes trained on Yukhei carry everything from pity to envy to curiosity. He lowers his head and stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jeans.  
  
A burst of agitated ‘Oh!’s and ‘Hey!’s make him look up again, and a flash of light brown comes barreling into his chest, nearly knocking the wind out of him.  
  
“Y-Yukhei.” Yukhei’s hands are already out of his pockets, holding onto the boy tightly.  
  
“Shh, its okay. Please, Jungwoo...please stop crying. I’m gonna do my best, promise.” Jungwoo starts sobbing against him so he adds, “Better than my best. I’ll come back a Victor.”  
  
Yukhei doesn’t know whether he’s serious or if it’s empty comfort. He doesn’t want it to be empty, not for Jungwoo and his mother, because they deserve more; and not for Jeno and the group of kids he tolerates, because they deserve to see what he can do. If it’s a show they want, then that’s what they’ll get.  
  
Would they even cry for him if he died?  
  
Yes, if. Not when. He’s serious. There’s no other option.  
  
Peacekeepers appear in a swarm and grab at Jungwoo, whose sobs dissolve into gasps for air as he thrashes around in their grip. He stills for just a moment and looks Yukhei straight in the face, apologies swimming in his eyes, dark circles turning purple.  
  
If Jungwoo wasn’t himself, wasn’t so scared, wasn’t already about to stop breathing right now, still in his district and a lifetime away from the arena, he would’ve volunteered in a heartbeat. He hopes Yukhei knows that. “Stay alive! Stay alive, for me!” And then they tear him away like a beast does flesh on a bone.  
  
Yukhei wonders how many beasts will be in the arena this year.  
  
_His skin is crawling._


End file.
